


Sleepless Slumber

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Gen, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This, Insecurity, Insomnia, Napping, Sleep Deprivation, Sleepovers, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-10 04:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18931276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Cliff has finally noticed that Larry is taking naps whenever he can get them, accidental or not, and he finally thinks he might know how to help him.It might be unconventional, sure, but who doesn't like a good slumber party?





	Sleepless Slumber

Cliff had noticed despite his lower perception and inability to turn his head too far, that one of the only constant and confusing things about his new friend Larry was the startling skill he had to fall asleep at any moment, and that was excluding when the Spirit left him in an unconscious heap on the floor.

He brought it up one day while the three of them were watching another re-run of Rita’s films, one with her in some sort of ratty nurse’s dress with debris falling all around her as she clung onto a man for dear life, and Larry just… leant forward, his arms crossed over his chest, snoring faintly. Rita, from where she was busy knitting in the chair off to the side, glanced over but didn’t comment. “What the fuck?” Cliff had said, raising his arms. “This is a first. Why does he get a pass and the rest of us don’t?”

“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about Cliff,” Rita didn’t turn her head to look at him.

Waving his arms at Larry’s hunched form, Cliff made an annoyed noise deep in his throat which sounded more like metal scraping against metal, but Rita huffed and put her knitting down anyway. “He’s napping in the middle of one of your movies!” Cliff said and he would have yelled it had it not been for the way that Larry really didn’t seem to be waking up, which was odd and unsettling, almost as much as Rita not complaining about it. “If that had been anyone else, you would have given us so much shit for it. What do you have with Larry that you don’t have with the rest of us?”

Rita ruffled and Cliff would have thought that he had crossed some sort of line judging by the look on Rita’s face, but Cliff was a robot now and wasn’t particularly worried about what she might do to him. “For your information,” Rita grit out, head tilted in the way that told Cliff that he defiantly shouldn’t have said that. “I have nothing with Larry except for the fact that he is my best friend and that I would do anything for him,” she took a deep breath and looked away, and if Cliff still had his eyebrows, he would have raised them. “ _But_ , to answer your question, him falling asleep is a sort of… blessing in disguise so to say. Even if it is during one of my pictures.”

“Now what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Snorting, Rita preoccupied herself with bunching up her knitting and placing it none too lightly on the table beside her. “How can you lack such perception that you haven’t noticed?” Rita demanded. “You’ve been living with us long enough now that you should have been able to see by forthwith the severe lack of sleep Larry gets, especially when we’re out on the road. Surely you _must_ have noticed.”

“Rita, you know how much I hate to talk shit about myself,” Cliff said, “but just this once, I think you’ve set your expectations a little too high.”

Rolling her eyes, Rita fixed Cliff with a look that was so poisonous, Cliff was sure he would have wet himself if he had still been able to. “As you should know, when Larry arrived here, his radiation levels were so high that no living creature could get close enough to him without burning up into a shrivelled, irradiated heap,” she said slowly and simply as if she was making sure that Cliff could understand. “The Chief helped fix his problem by giving him special bandages that kept his radiation contained. He takes them off to sleep, as you would expect, but he hasn’t been able to with us all in enclosed spaces so often recently, because he doesn’t exactly want us to end up like his first flowers. You might have been able to deal with the chemical levels, but the rest of us would have died within hours.”

Cliff wished he still had a face at that moment because he would have loved to frown at her, but he settled for making a noise of confusion instead. “Right, ok, so why didn’t he sleep before we left? You can’t tell me that him killing you all in your sleep is a constant problem. And doesn’t he, like, get in a few hours of nap time when the Spirit leaves him?”

“Just because you are currently a robot does not mean that you have forgotten the fundamentals of sleep,” Rita snapped and Cliff actually flinched back away from her and raised his arms to cover his face for some strange reason. “Being forcibly unconscious on a hardwood floor and then made to relive painful memories do not count as sleep.”

“So what you’re trying to tell me,” Cliff said. “Is that Larry is always taking naps because he doesn’t sleep?”

Throwing her hands up in the air, Rita looked as though she were about to punch Cliff in the face, but at that moment Larry woke up with a snort and after he flailed his arms about for a moment and rubbed at his face, he sat back against the couch and looked around the room. “Oh- shit. Sorry Rita,” he yawned, “What did I miss?”

“Nothing dear,” Rita replied politely, picking up her knitting once again and turning back to the screen, her conversation with Cliff apparently over. “You only missed the boring parts, it’s about to speed up here in just a moment. Oh look- here comes the rescue team.”

So Cliff, despite not really understanding it all, would watch Larry from around corners and in windows and would see all the times he would just… fall asleep. Sometimes he would be alone, sitting on a deck chair with the sun soaking into his bandages or tending to his plants in the bus with gentle fingers, but no matter where he was or what he was doing, Cliff could always hear gentle snoring coming from him soon enough.

Other times, he wasn’t alone, and it would be up to one of the others to guide him back to bed or stumble across him as they made their way around the manor. The Chief would have to shake Larry awake with a guilty look on his face and apologetic words, but Larry would just wipe his face and wave him off. Jane would look at him for a few moments before her face fluttered and she was bending down as Flit took him away back to his bedroom and every time it was without a word and she would never mention it again. Cyborg, on the off chance that he would find Larry in a compromised position, would easily and gently lift him into his arms and would lightly grumble the whole time as he brought Larry to a more comfortable place. Rita, not really having many options to taking her friend to bed, would gather as many soft pillows and heavy blankets as she could find, whether they be from her own room or the guest rooms or supply cabinets, and would bundle Larry up until he looked like he would suffocate in the all the fluff, and then Rita would lie beside him on the ground or sit in the opposite chair and stay with him until he woke up.

But it seemed as though Larry was making a very deliberate effort to make sure Cliff never caught him asleep, despite obviously being so exhausted that he was practically asleep on his feet.

Sometimes, his chest would glow and the Spirit would leave him where he was on the couch, and Larry wouldn’t even move, because he was already asleep.

In his odd, roundabout way, Cliff made himself a resolution that Larry never sleeping and then acting like everything was alright wasn’t going to stand if he could help it, and maybe he was too forceful, but Cliff suddenly needed to let Larry know that they were actually friends.

So one day, while Rita and Vic were talking about something deep and meaningful in the library and Larry was out tending to his bus and the Chief was taking a nap somewhere, Cliff passed a maybe-Jane in the hallway on his way to his room and made a tentative attempt to call out. “Jane?” He asked, but then she turned around, and he quickly backtracked. “No, Hammerhead. Sorry about that, I couldn’t tell from behind.”

“What the fuck do you want?” Hammerhead spat, fists clenched at her sides, ready for a fight as always.

Cliff held his hands up in surrender and the malice on Hammerheads face faded a bit. “Sorry, I know you’re probably busy. I was just wondering if you could do me a favour- don’t worry, it’s nothing important or anything, I was just hoping that if you happen to run into Larry, could you let him know that I want to talk to him? Pretty please?”

Hammerhead looked about to object, but she rocked back on her heels and nodded. “Fine,” she grumbled before shoving her hands into her pockets and storming back down the hall.

It was a while later when Larry finally came up to Cliff’s room while he was idly watching his trainset go around and around the town he had made out of Lego bricks and tiny models, and he sounded a little irritated to be disturbed. “Hammerhead said you wanted to see me,” Larry announced after a moment. “Well, ‘said’ is a kind word. She practically yelled it in my face. What did you need to see me for?”

The noise Cliff’s shoulders made when he shrugged grated on his sound receptors but Larry didn’t seem to mind. “I’ve just been noticing something odd.” Cliff began, then corrected himself. “Well, I brought it up to Rita and she told me all about it, but you know what I mean.” He waved a hand at Larry who looked down at himself quizzically. “You don’t sleep? Like, at all? Are you physically incapable of sleeping or do you just keep yourself awake as much as possible to prove a point?”

Larry actually took a step back, and Cliff couldn’t tell through the bandages, but he was sure that Larry was scowling. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And Rita, bless her, needs to learn how to keep her mouth shut with random information she doesn’t really have.”

“Oh cut the crap Larry, aren’t we supposed to be a team?” Cliff gestured vaguely at the window. “You fell asleep on the bus even when you weren’t driving, you took a nap when we were at that stupid Nazi puppet show. You do know that you tip-toeing around me just in case I see you napping doesn’t really work that well when we’re in close, confined spaces all the time.”

“Why the fuck does it matter to you then?” Larry snapped and took a few steps back towards the door. Cliff inwardly sighed- Larry didn’t close the door behind him when he entered and he could easily dash out into the hall and Cliff was in no way fast enough to block the doorway before Larry got there. He would have to play this right.

“Hold up- why the fuck do you think I’m trying to hurt you?” Cliff raised his hands again and boy, it really did feel like he was raising his hands in surrender a lot these days. “I’m just asking as a friend. I envy that you get to sleep, yeah, but even before I became a copper robot who ‘recharges’ instead of sleep, I knew that sleeping was a big deal. And you’re not doing it. Whether that’s because you can’t or because you don’t want to, I don’t know, but I’m asking as a friend who, surprisingly, actually gives a fuck about you! So just hear me out- please?”

For a moment, Larry looked as though he wanted to knock over Cliff’s model town and Cliff kept a very close eye on him, but ultimately Larry sighed and he dropped his shoulders. “I guess it’s not really a secret,” he conceded. “It’s just… I don’t really get much sleep, whether I try or not, and sometimes I stay up for as long as possible so I don’t get my hopes up. When I take my bandages off and actually fall asleep at night, the Spirit keeps me up. Like, I’m unconscious, but I don’t get much sleep, because I’m living through dreams if that makes sense. It… sort of sends me messages that it thinks are meaningful but they’re really not. And I try not to sleep around any of you because that would mean taking off my bandages and I don’t really want to kill you.”

Cliff tilted his head to the side with the sound of clinking metal and overlapping plates. “The Spirit really doesn’t want you to sleep that much?”

“I think it just wants to talk to me,” Larry tried. “And the only way it knows how is through dreams with other people’s faces.”

“And you can’t take your bandages off to sleep because…?”

Larry looked at him strangely. “I always sleep with them off, but I can’t exactly take them off around any of you unless you want to turn into a blob, like Rita, but you won’t be able to reform yourself if you concentrated. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t need me liquefying my friends on my conscious.”

There was a swift moment of silence between them where Larry shifted awkwardly on his heels as if searching for an escape and the only biological part of Cliff’s body began working into overdrive as he thought. Eventually, he grabbed Larry’s arm and dragged him with him out the door, protesting the whole way. “Cliff, where are we going?”

Instead of answering, Cliff dragged Larry all the way to the thick, insulated doors with the mechanical lock and the decontamination hallway and only let go when the door locked shut behind them. Cliff knew that his expressionless face could be unnerving to most people, so he looked at Larry with unblinking eyes until the other man sighed and reluctantly opened the door to the led-lined bedroom.

He had never actually been inside Larry’s room- that was something reserved for the brave Rita and the sometimes insufferable Chief. There was a shelf filled with rolled up bandages and a bin filled with dirty, bloody ones, overgrown plants in the bathroom that had wilted more than slightly. The walls were bare and led-lied, overlapping plates that made up most of the grey-scale room, and there was a dresser in the corner, dusty and cracked in places as if it were hardly used. Behind him, Larry stood there awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot. The centre of his chest glowed warningly and he covered it with a hand.

“So,” Cliff said weakly, looking around the room. “This is your room? A little drab, don’t you think? I could probably stick some model planes on the roof if you want as long as someone else put them together for me. I used to do it for Clara and her glow-in-the-dark stars. I’m tall enough to reach the ceiling.”

Larry ran an exhausted hand down his face. “What are you doing in here, Cliff? What do you want?”

“Oh, right,” Cliff said. “Uh, you need to sleep and I’ve noticed that you usually end up taking a nap when people are around. So I thought, ‘hey, I’m made of metal, you can’t hurt me, I’ll just stay here while you take a nap and then we’ll be alright’. Is that a nuts idea? Because let me tell you, since that rat fiasco, I’m not quite sure which of my ideas are sane and which are bat shit crazy.”

The silence between them was only broken by the heavy breathing from Larry and the shifting of Cliff’s mechanised joints as he waited. “I think the rat might have eaten all the important parts from your brain.” 

Scoffing, Cliff waved his arms at Larry and retreated into a corner. “Take off your bandages. I couldn’t care less what you look like under there unless it’s going to make me jealous, which I doubt.”

“We should get the Chief to do some tests to see if my radiation levels affect you in any way…”

“Screw the Chief! He isn’t here, this is our time to shine! Seize the moment! Now get naked before I change my mind.”

Reluctantly, Larry looked at himself in the mirror and began to unwind his bandages from his face, grumbling under his breath the entire time, wincing at the way the clinging white bandages peeled away from his ruined flesh red and stained with blood and puss. If Cliff noticed, he didn’t say anything, and for that Larry was grateful. Tossing the soiled bandages into the tub to pile up with the rest, Larry reluctantly climbed into bed and sat against the wall, watching Cliff watching him. The Spirit was suspiciously silent within his chest. “This is a ridiculous idea and I can’t believe I’m going along with it.” Larry shook his head.

“I know. _You_ , listening to _me_? What has the world come to.” Cliff said, rigid and pressed up into the corner. “Now just… close your eyes and go to sleep. If you want, I can sing you some lullabies if that’ll help. I think I can still remember Clara’s favourites.”

Larry looked at him dumbfounded, unable to shake the self-conscious feeling at having his friend see him without his bandages, but he tried to ignore it. “I’m not gonna be able to fall asleep with you standing in the corner watching me.”

“Oh, right, right,” Cliff held his hands up for a moment before lowering them back down to his sides. “Gotcha. Well, if we’re really doing this, I think I might just… power down for a moment. It’s kind of like my version of sleeping- recharging? I don’t fucking know the logistics, but I’m going to do that.”

“Alright,” Larry said uneasily as he slowly lowered himself down to the pillows, and he wasn’t going to lie, it felt nice. “Goodnight then, Cliff.”

“Goodnight!” Came Cliff’s overly joyous reply. “Sleep tight! Don’t let the bed-bugs bite!”

Rolling his eyes, Larry finally gave in to the siren song of sleep, and for the very first time in a countless while, he truly did have a good night.


End file.
